The Queen made a surprise visit on Tuesday to Bond Street tube station in London to be told that Crossrail is going to be named after her: the Elizabeth line.

One shouldn’t comment on how women are dressed, we should be listening to what they say, but an exception must surely be made here. Her Majesty’s colour-co-ordination was spot on. Crossrail purple, sorry Elizabethline purple, has been deliberately chosen so as to match the Queen’s outfit (though I think the Queen’s attire is closer to lilac).

The colour purple has been associated with power and wealth going back to the Roman emperors, it’s status stemming from the rarity and cost of the dye originally used to produce it. Queen Elizabeth I forbad anyone except close members of the royal family to wear it. Did Transport for London have to ask the Queen’s permission I wonder?

Crossrail by the way is a £14.8bn east-west underground line, the central London section of which will open in December 2018, with a fleet of new 200-metre-long trains. Amazingly the project is so far on time and on budget.

The Orange Army is out in force, many of them with seats in the circle. The Queen looks genuinely delighted as one would. But why are the top brass not wearing their hi-vis jackets? Lots of women in the front row, but they didn’t get to give theQueen her purple roundel plaque.

But Elizabeth, that’s four syllables. Though that’s the same as the Victoria line and the Piccadilly line, it doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue, it’s a bit clunky. For instance, you don’t say ‘I’ll take the underground’, you say ‘I’ll take the tube’.

Mmmm, I can’t think what Londoners might call the new line?

Crossrail has been called Crossrail for the past five years so it’s going to be some time before people start calling it something else. And what happens when Crossrail 2 is built. That’s something to keep you awake at night; the ‘Charles line’ or the ‘William line’.

Queen (Her Majesty). The Victoria line goes right under my house [Buckingham Palace]. But there’s a kink in it to avoid our bomb shelters. I opened that line you know, in 1968.Mike Brown (London Transport Commissioner). Yes Ma’am. A bit before my time, that’s the year I was born

It wasn’t who was thrown off Hammersmith Bridge, but what. And as it happened over a hundred years ago, you’d expect it to be long forgotten. But someone couldn’t help dredging up the past. Before we get to that however, I’ll need to tell you a little about typefaces.

When books and newspapers were typeset manually, a font referred to a particular size, weight (light, bold) and style (regular, italic) of a typeface. Each letter in the typeface had its own type or ‘sort’ like those at the end of the hammers of an old-fashioned typewriter. A typeface comprised a range of fonts sharing the same overall design. The word font (traditionally spelt fount in British English) comes from Middle French founte meaning ‘something that has been melted; a casting’ and refers to the process of casting metal type at a type foundry. All this has of course been superseded by and large by digital printing, though we still refer to electronic typefaces as fonts like Calibri, Helvetica, Times Roman, and Verdana.

The Johnston typeface first used in 1916, and an underground roundel from the 1920s that uses the typeface. A licence is required from TfL if you want to use the font or its successor New Johnston.

Some typefaces are better known than others. Johnston has been the corporate typeface of public transport in London since the foundation of the London Passenger Transport Board (LPTB) in 1933. Its use is one of the world’s longest-lasting examples of corporate branding, and it remains a copyrighted property of the LPTB’s current successor, Transport for London. Edward Johnston was commissioned in 1913 by Frank Pick, Commercial Manager of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London to design a typeface as part of his plan to strengthen the company’s corporate identity. Pick specified to Johnston that he wanted a typeface that would ensure that the Underground Group’s posters would not be mistaken for advertisements, and that it should belong ‘unmistakably to the twentieth century’. The typeface was originally called Underground, then Johnston’s Railway Type, and later simply Johnston. In 1979 the typeface was re-designed to make it more versatile and this became New Johnston.

Gill Sans was used by designer Edward Young on the modern, minimalist, and now iconic covers of Penguin Books. This was one of the first editions launched on 30 July 1935

The Johnston typeface however was not available for use by anyone else. It was one of the public faces of the London Underground and no one else would be allowed to use it. One of Johnston’s students at London’s Central School of Arts and Crafts, Eric Gill, who went on to become a well established sculptor and graphic artist, had however worked on the development of the Johnston typeface. He went on to produce a new typeface, Gill Sans, that blended the influences of Johnston, classic typefaces and Roman inscriptions. The design of the new font was intended to look both cleanly modern and traditional at the same time. When it was released in 1928, it was an immediate success, with the London & North Eastern Railway (LNER) using it for its posters, timetables and publicity material. On its formation in 1963, British Railways continued to use Gills Sans. In the digital age, Gills Sans remains in widespread use, and is one of the fonts bundled with Mac and Windows software.

In England, type foundries, where typefaces were designed and type was cast, began in 1476, with the introduction of the printing press by William Caxton. The creation of typefaces required considerable design and typographic skills (typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language readable and appealing), and type designers were immensely proud of their work. In fact most people in the printing trade were characteristically proud of their work. In the early 1900s, a bitter dispute over a typeface between the two partners of a printing press led to one of the most infamous episodes in typographic history.

The Doves Press was a private press based at 1 Hammersmith Terrace in west London, and was named after the Dove Tavern, an old riverside pub nearby that still stands today. The press was founded by a bookbinder Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson (who already ran the Dove Bindery on the same site), and an engraver and printer Emery Walker. Cobden-Sanderson and Walker had been close friends of William Morris, the English textile designer, poet, novelist, and socialist activist, who had died in 1896. It was Morris’s wife, Jane, who had encouraged Cobden-Sanderson to become a bookbinder, and Walker’s expertise and his collection of 16th-century typefaces inspired Morris to create the Kelmscott Press. All three men were closely associated with the British Arts & Crafts movement.

Cobden-Sanderson chose the books and had the final say in their design, and Walker managed the technical side of the business. Cobden-Sanderson had commissioned a new typeface in 1899 which was to become the Doves Type. It was crafted by master punchcutter Edward Prince, based on drawings produced by Percy Tiffin of the pioneering Venetian type created in 1470 by the French designer and engraver Nicolas Jenson.

A page from John Milton’s Paradise Lost illustrating the Doves Type which was printed in two volumes by Doves Press in 1902-05.

The books published by the Doves Press looked very different to most private press books of their time. The clear typeface and the lack of decoration gave the books a very simple and austere look. The only decoration in the books were the capitals created by Edward Johnston (who was later to design the Johnston typeface described above) and ink flourishes by the calligrapher Graily Hewitt. Although most of the Doves Press books were simply bound in vellum, many of the bindings produced by the Doves bindery were very ornate and elaborate. The masterpiece of the Press was their five-volume Bible, completed in 1905. It was set by hand and printed on a hand press, with the only decoration being printed red initial letters by Johnston.

But while the books were successful, the partnership between Walker and Cobden-Sanderson became unworkable.

A ‘mind the gap’ tile mosaic on a District line platform at Victoria Underground station in London

‘Please mind the gap between the train and the platform’ is a recorded announcement familiar to travellers on the London Underground. The ‘tube’ is the oldest underground railway in the world and when it was built in the 19th century the tunnels often followed the line of the streets above so as to avoid the costs of obtaining permission from owners to tunnel under their properties. The result was that on the oldest deep-level or ‘tube’ lines, the Bakerloo, Central, Northern, and Piccadilly, the tracks in the tunnels inevitably curve quite a bit, which means that when a train comes to rest at a platform that is on a curve, there is a gap between the carriage and the platform. The gap can either be in the middle of a carriage where the platform is on the ‘outside’ of the curve, or at each end of a carriage where the platform is on the ‘inside’ of a curve. There were likely other reasons for the winding tracks underground such as pipes, sewers, and deep foundations that would have been too costly for the construction companies, who were privately-financed, to divert or reconstruct.

This wasn’t so much of a problem when the tunnels were first built as train carriages were much shorter, so the gaps weren’t so great. But as trains were modernised and the carriages made longer to increase their capacity, the gap between the train and the platform was quite a hazard in many stations. Although drivers and station attendants had been warning passengers of the gap since at least the early 1920s, this was proving increasingly impractical, and in 1968 London Underground started introducing recorded announcements to warn passengers to ‘mind the gap’.

Oswald Laurence joined the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1938 at the age of 17. The dashing actor appeared in a number of minor roles in films including Three Men In A Boat, a 1956 comedy starring Laurence Harvey, Jimmy Edwards, and a young Kenneth Williams playing a bit-part, as well as appearances in the TV series The Saint, starring Roger Moore.

One of the early announcers was Oswald Laurence whose clear compelling voice was heard by millions of people at many stations on the Northern Line. In the early 2000s however, the minimalist message to ‘mind the gap’ was deemed an insufficient warning. What was the gap? Where was it? Whilst there are no records of anyone misunderstanding what the announcement was referring to, only of people not taking notice of it, or being in a state of intoxication such that they were incapable of acting on it. Nevertheless the announcement was re-recorded and the location of the gap clearly identified: ‘please mind the gap between the train and the platform’.

Mr Laurence, who as an actor had made the recording in the 1970s, died in 2001 at the age of 80, and his place in history might have been forgotten. Except that when his announcement at Embankment Station, the last station to play the recording, was replaced in November 2012 by a new one, his widow, Dr Margaret McCollum, wrote to London Underground. Dr McCollum asked if they had a recording of the announcement that her husband had made some forty years before, and explained that she would go to the station if she was travelling that way, to hear her husband’s voice. ‘Knowing that I could go and listen to his voice was simply wonderful. It was a great comfort. I would go and sit on the platform, and sometimes miss a couple of trains just so I could hear it’. Here is a video of an interview by the BBC with Dr McCollum.

Dr Margaret McCollum met Oswald Laurence in 1992 when she went on guided tour holiday with Mr Laurence as tour guide. She heard ‘the most gorgeous voice’ behind her and the pair were instantly attracted.

Somewhat unexpectedly, given that London Underground has a lot on its plate, carrying over four million passengers every day and rising, tracked down the recording, and not only did they send Dr McCollum a copy of the recording on a CD, they also decided to reinstate his announcement at Embankment station. So now if you stand on the northbound platform of the Northern Line at the station, where MIND THE GAP is painted at intervals on the platforms edge, it is an eerie experience hearing Mr Laurence remind people in his precise authoritative voice, not once but three times, as trains rush into the platform and come to a rest, to ‘mind the gap’. You can hear him here.

There are two other locations where ‘mind the gap’ warnings are most notably played: the Central line platforms at Bank, where there can be a 1-foot (30cm) gap, and the Bakerloo line platforms at Piccadilly Circus.

The Queen inspected a new train at Baker Street station during the 150th anniversary of the London Underground in March 2013. Baker Street is one of the oldest and ornate stations on the Underground. Here the Queen alights carefully from a carriage, though the gap at this particular platform is not that wide.

The ‘please mind the gap between the train and the platform’ warning is also used where there is a difference in height between the platform and the floor of the train carriage. This occurs where a platform is used by both deep-level ‘tube’ trains and larger ‘sub-surface’ trains, and in these situations the height of the platform is a compromise between the different floor heights of the train carriages (a difference of 8 inches). That’s why you will hear the warning at a number of stations in west London, which although having straight platforms, serve both the larger District line trains and the deep-level Piccadilly line trains.

If you are really interested, you can read a lot more about London Underground platform gaps on Mike Horne’s website here. Amongst many fascinating facts, Mike Horne has identified that the largest gap between the train and the platform at any of London’s deep-level ‘tube’ stations is at the west end of the eastbound platform of the Central Line at Bank station, a scary 375mm or 14.76 inches!

Going back to Oswald Laurence, in February this year, a short film Mind the Gap was shown at the London Short Film Festival which tells Dr McCollum’s story. The poignant film was written, directed and produced by Luke Flanagan with Eileen Nicholas played the lead role, and you can see it here. The main location for the tube shots was Barbican station which is in the open, and as the tracks are straight at the station, there is no gap, and hence no announcement is needed, but filming in the deep-level tube stations such as at Embankment would have proved difficult.

A trial run on the Metropolitan Railway near Paddington station shortly before opening in January 1863. The gentleman with his elbow on the side of the truck in the foreground is W E Gladstone, future Prime Minister but Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time.

The London Underground, or the Tube, was the world’s first underground railway. On 9 January 1863, a train puffed out of Paddington (Bishops Road) station* bound for Farringdon, three and a half miles away under the streets of London. The next day the line was opened to the general public. It was an immediate success; almost 40,000 passengers were carried, and long queues formed at every station. The Tube was born and London would never be the same again.

(* Now the Hammersmith & City underground station)

The line was built in 33 months using the ‘cut and cover’ method (the tunnels were dug from the surface and then covered again) by the Metropolitan Railway, and cost £1.7m. The Metropolitan was a private company formed in 1854 to link the mainline stations at Paddington, Euston, and King’s Cross with the growing City business district to the east. The line now forms part of the Circle, Hammersmith & City, and Metropolitan lines.

Metropolitan locomotive No 1 built in 1898, pulls a train through Baker Street underground station on 13 January 2013, led by restored Met carriage No 353 which was built in 1892,

This year, to celebrate the 150th anniversary, London Transport arranged many events starting with re-enactments on Sunday 13 January of the original journey using a 1898 steam locomotive (trains were steam-powered until the first electric locomotive was introduced in 1890) and restored carriages. Unsurprisingly the limited number of seats that were available, £180 first class, £150 second class, were sold out months before the event.

The London Underground seems to have a fascination worldwide. As well as a huge variety of gifts, souvenirs and memorabilia on sale at the London Transport Museum shop, there are any number of books, DVDs and websites about the Tube. And questions about the Underground, often in the form of cryptic clues, always crop up in pub quizzes. On the anniversary, as if to confirm this interest, the Daily Telegraph ran a feature,150 Fascinating Tube Facts. I’ve selected five of the facts from the list, and added some details (in green) of my own.

‘Inspector Sands, please report to the operations room immediately’ is an announcement that many commuters will have heard on the London Underground or on mainline railway stations. Inspector Sands is a code phrase used by public transport authorities in the UK to alert staff to an emergency, or to a potential emergency such as a fire alarm being operated or a suspect package, without alerting the public and creating panic. The actual phrase used may vary so as to direct staff to the location of the incident.

‘Mr Sands’ has long been used in theatres as a code for fire, where sand buckets were used to put out fires since the word ‘fire’ backstage or anywhere else would cause alarm to the performers and the audience. Indeed the phrase ‘it’s like shouting fire in a crowded theatre’ is a popular metaphor for a person recklessly causing unnecessary panic.

Apparently the alert usually means a fire alarm has been tripped and 90% of the time it’s a false alarm. The use of ‘Sands’ may arise from the sand from the fire buckets that would have been to put out fires. Less likely is the suggestion that it comes from the period of time that elapses between the staff investigating and resetting the fire alarm, as might be measured in a sand-timer, before the station’s systems automatically switch to a fail-safe evacuation mode.

Incidentally in theatres, Mr Gravel was the code name for a bomb alert. I wonder if this is true, and if so, why Mr Gravel?